Note (return) — Chapter III

Now we hold that this feeling and sentiment of the Divine--the supernatural--exists in every mind. It may be, it undoubtedly is, somewhat modified in its manifestations by the circumstances in which men are placed, and the degree of culture they have enjoyed. The African Fetichist, in his moral and intellectual debasement, conceives a supernatural power enshrined in every object of nature. The rude Fijian regards with dread, and even terror, the Being who darts the lightnings and wields the thunderbolts. The Indian "sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind." The Scottish "herdsman" on the lonely mountain-top "feels the presence and the power of greatness," and "in its fixed and steady lineaments he sees an ebbing and a flowing mind." The philosopher 128 lifts his eyes to "the starry heavens" in all the depth of their concave, and with all their constellations of glory moving on in solemn grandeur, and, to his mind, these immeasurable regions seem "filled with the splendors of the Deity, and crowded with the monuments of his power;" or he turns his eye to "the Moral Law within," and he hears the voice of an intelligent and a righteous God. In all these cases we have a revelation of the sentiment of the Divine, which dwells alike in all human minds. In the Athenians this sentiment was developed in a high degree. The serene heaven which Greece enjoyed, and which was the best-loved roof of its inhabitants, the brilliant sun, the mountain scenery of unsurpassed grandeur, the deep blue sea, an image of the infinite, these poured all their fullness on the Athenian mind, and furnished the most favorable conditions for the development of the religious sentiments. The people of Athens spent most of their time in the open air in communion with nature, and in the cheerful and temperate enjoyment of existence. To recognize the Deity in the living powers of nature, and especially in man, as the highest sensible manifestation of the Divine, was the peculiar prerogative of the Grecian mind. And here in Athens, art also vied with nature to deepen the religious sentiments. It raised the mind to ideal conceptions of a beauty and a sublimity which transcended all mere nature-forms, and by images, of supernatural grandeur and loveliness presented to the Athenians symbolic representations of the separate attributes and operations of the invisible God. The plastic art of Greece was designed to express religious ideas, and was consecrated by religious feeling. Thus the facts of the case are strikingly in harmony with the words of the Apostle: "All things which I behold bear witness to your carefulness in religion," your "reverence for the Deity," your "fear of God." 129 "The sacred objects" in Athens, and especially "the altar to the Unknown God," were all regarded by Paul as evidences of their instinctive faith in the invisible, the supernatural, the divine.